By Jacqui Rees Like 10118yellow on Facebook now 10-11-8, South Africa’s national operator-assisted directory service, together with Trudon’s Online and Search Department, are proud to announce the launch of their 10-11-8 service on Facebook (www.facebook.com/10118yellow) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/10118yellow). The objective of this project is to connect with users in the environment that they are most comfortable with, namely social media - and Facebook and Twitter are currently the most popular platforms. With users on the go 24-7 and usually on their mobile devices, this initiative serves the purpose of assisting users on the move to find what they are looking for in the comfort of their social environment. By using their personal mobile devices they will now be connected to the premier source of local business information in South Africa.

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By Briony French

The cool Mango Airlines plane Awesome sunset This past Thursday I went away for my first real break in about six years, which is frightening in itself, but I am a bit of a workaholic and, to be honest, finding the time to fit a holiday in these days is a bit difficult in my field of work. Also, with our company using the policy of no work no pay, it makes it even harder, as it’s technically more expensive. But I managed to finally get away for about four days. Where Did I Go? I went to Umhlanga Rocks in KwaZulu Natal province.  It was great; we arrived at King Shaka airport and the temperature was higher than Johannesburg at 18:30. We hired a car and made our way to our hotel, which I didn’t realise was right in front of Gateway shopping centre.

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By Dianne Bayley

Don’t let the news confuse – Voltbet.com is legal

If you’re a sports better, here’s what you need to know: Online gambling is illegal; online sports betting is not.

Internet or online gambling, as per the notice from the National Gambling Board and the recent High Court judgement, refers to online casino gambling, including online poker. Powerbet Gaming, the official operator of Voltbet.com, is a South African operation fully licensed by The Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board to offer internet sports betting and online bookmaking services.

Odds are you’ve been confused by media statements. Here’s a tip from the Voltbet.com team: As a sports better, you’re in the clear.

We’re a nation of sports lovers, and every one of us “knows” who is going to win . . . so now South Africans can turn their passionate sports knowledge into winnings on Voltbet, the country’s premier locally licensed, designed and legally-operated sports betting website. Group marketing and sales director Daniel Kustelski believes Voltbet.com will change the face of online sports betting with its ease of use and variety of betting options. “We had good traffic through the Soccer World Cup and are backing ourselves to capture around 10% of the R700-million South African online sports betting market in the next two years,” he says, citing best returns and fast payouts as two of the reasons for an excellent sign up rate so far. David Manaway, CEO of Powerbet, the proudly South African online gaming software supplier that designed and built the Voltbet.com proprietary software, says the online sports betting market in South Africa is a very young industry and one that is full of potential. “It’s about having an excellent product that our market trusts and giving online betters options across all sports and all types of bets. Besides the user-friendly interface that makes getting started exceptionally simple, we also have a customer call centre and a team with over 20 years of experience in trading, support and sports marketing.”

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By Jen Aye Thumbing a ride I stood there and thumbed rides for what seemed like an eternity, occasionally checking the time and thinking how late I was going to be. Mostly, I got a mouthful of dust as cars whizzed by. I was targetting the black drivers as it’s those one can usually count on to stop, but as no driver of any other race had stopped, I started to wonder whether it was merely caution on their part, or perhaps something deeper? Standing there with my rucksack on my lonesome, I don’t believe I looked threatening to anyone, let alone a well-fed farmer. Occasionally I received a hand gesture that the drivers were not going my way but that was about as much acknowledgement as I received. So I waited, looking with apprehension at the stranger next to me; he looked every bit as dodgy as he acted, sporting a black leather jacket. He kept making whispered phone calls into his tireless gadget, and I hoped he wasn’t alerting his gang of the new meat he had found in me. I was very relieved to have him there though, it beat being alone on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere.

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By Bongani Nkosi

Although the 2010 Fifa World Cup came to an end almost a month ago, the crime-prevention strategy used during its month-long run will continue, helping create a safer, more secure South Africa.

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa told Parliament on 3 August that the tournament “might have come and gone, but the security legacy in the fight against crime is still benefiting the country”.

The heavy investment in police resources and skills, which undoubtedly contributed to the success of the Cup, forms a major part of this legacy, according to Mthethwa.

Before the tournament the police department spent about R572-million (US$79-million) on crowd-control tools, helicopters, water cannons, advanced body armour, 100 BMW highway-patrol vehicles, cartridges and ammunition.

Some 44 000 officers, 3 000 more than initially planned, were deployed during the spectacle.

The department also invested in new bomb squad equipment, special trainers to help crime-scene investigations and 300 new mobile cameras with high-tech monitoring devices – these “remain in place”, the minister said.

“All these resources are still with police … and are serving as an enormous arsenal in our fight against crime.”

In total, Mthethwa’s department was allocated R1,3-billion ($18-million) for its World Cup security strategy, which was well executed and led to very few criminal cases being reported. This even impressed Fifa, which applauded the South African Police Service in a post-tournament media briefing.

“We spent our budget accountably and sensibly in accordance with the crime-prevention and combating approach of this security plan, which resulted in the safety of our citizens and visitors from around the world,” he said.

Part of this budget remains and is being used to further improve the country’s police services.

Top-priority security operations

The men and women in blue kept security tight at stadiums, hotels and other public viewing areas during the Cup, and also maintained a high visibility on the streets doing spot searches.

Collaboration with international agencies such as Interpol was also instrumental in ensuring a safe World Cup.

The police’s fleet of armoured vehicles and forensic science laboratory were refurbished ahead of the tournament, and 40 helicopters were made available to help in overhead surveillance operations.

“The number of police personnel added to the force, as well as the equipment acquired for their use, is one of the important legacies of the 2010 Fifa World Cup,” said Mthethwa.

“The emphasis is now on sustaining these best practices and continuing to deal a devastating blow to crime.”

This was reinforced at a meeting of top police management in Mpumalanga province at the end of July, according to department spokesperson Zweli Mnisi.

Republished with kind permission of www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com

Read more: http://www.mediaclubsouthafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1896:security-050810&catid=46:2010news&Itemid=118#ixzz0wNyKRGn7

By Briony French

What, I hear you saying? The government wants us to pay more tax? Well, in a word…YES!

What is emissions tax? This is a new tax we’re expected to pay when purchasing our new cars.
Why do we need to pay this tax? Well it’s simple, we here on earth create pollution in everything we do and use. And one of our biggest contributors to the pollution level that we all contribute to, is driving our cars, Transporting our goods. So this new tax on vehicles is designed to curb the CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) emissions.

How are they going to tax us?

Well apparently we will be taxed on our new vehicle purchases. And obviously the more gas they guzzle the more tax you will pay because the more gas you guzzle the more Carbon dioxide your vehicle pumps out into the Atmosphere causing what we in Johannesburg can already see in the air. All the smog and smoke, that lurks in the air around us. When walking sometimes you can taste the Carbon dioxide in the air, especially at peak times during the day.

So how this is all going to work is as of the 1st September 2010. When we purchase a new vehicle we will have to pay for the amount of Carbon Dioxide the car emits. So from my research and understanding, I have summed this all up as follows.

We will pay R75 per gram per kilometre for each g/km above the 120g/km. So what this really means is that vehicles emitting between 300g/km and 450g/km of carbon dioxide like our 4×4s and our large engined luxury cars will be forking out an extra R13 500 to R24 750 extra on top of the retail price. The Treasury hopes to increase the national revenue by R450 million in the upcoming financial year.
How this will help the environment at the moment it is introduced?
It wont, other than maybe make people re-look at the 4X4 and if it can be worked into the price and then the consumer pays it off. I don’t see this whole thing working for the environment much.

Petrol

Petrol does play a huge part in what we emmit out into the air through any vehicle, including myself on my bike. Yes we have unleaded but South Africa’s fuel is nowhere at the quality it needs to be at for us to emit less Carbon Dioxide than we are now. And from my understanding we are years behind in the greener petrol, which our overseas friends already have, as well as their Hybrid cars. At this present date Toyota is the only vehicle manufacturers to have brought out the first Green car out in South Africa and it’s called the Prius. And this is the only passenger vehicle on the market where you don’t have to pay this emissions tax.

At this present moment in time, our government is still working on a flat rate for all our transporting companies, whether its buses or trucks.

By Jen Aye Human rights for apes? Not so long ago,  the Spanish parliament approved resolutions urging the country to comply with the great apes project founded in 1993 which urges that “non human hominids” should enjoy the rights to life, freedom and not to be tortured. Started by philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, the notion argued that the ape is the closet genetic relative to humans - that it displays emotions such as fear, anxiety and jealousy-and should be protected by similar laws. Also, humans and apes share similar life spans and the latter are known to form strong family bonds which are maintained for life as do their human relatives. Apparently the movement to grant apes human rights has caught fire worldwide since then, which gets me thinking; apes are definitely not humans that’s for sure and neither do they aspire to be if their inability to evolve is to be taken into consideration, for it’s been light years since humans evolved – I believe if they’d wished to follow suit, they would be humans by now.

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By Dianne Bayley

South Africans love to eat. Not only that, we’re more than adequate cooks. From the lady on the street corner braaiing mielies (read “barbequeing corn on the cob” if you’re American), to the construction worker frying eggs on a clean shovel atop a fire, to the gent firing up his Weber on a Saturday afternoon, we’re all fairly inventive when it comes to filling up. (more…)

By Briony French

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By Jen Aye More goes on at the salon than hair business If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. The same should be said of a hair salon, especially the type that have a ‘Barbershop’ movie feel to them. As one of my many hustles, I get to manage a salon every so often and it is very entertaining to say the least. A lot more than just plaiting, weaving, washing and the occasional scorching of hair goes on in there and the conversations get extremely heated too. I have never been accused of backing out of a discussion or debates; they sometimes lean dangerously towards verbal fights, on not more than one occasion I have found myself hopelessly in the eye of the inferno.

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By Nqobani Khumalo

Tight Prison Security I went to a Johannesburg prison recently to visit someone. I walked through the scanners and had the back of my palm gently stamped with invisible infra-red ink. Then I was directed to a small room where I become intimately acquainted with a female officer. She ensured that I wasn’t trying to smuggle anything into the prison anywhere on my person. Anywhere. Hot-faced and regretting my decision to wear a knee-length skirt and boots, I walked down a short path to the warm, stuffy waiting hall with a high ceiling. There I presented identification and the admin officer ensured that I was indeed listed to visit. Then I sat and waited. The long wooden bench I sat on was sturdy.  I looked around at the other 60-odd visitors, doing that ‘I’m-friendly-but-let’s-not-chat’ smile one does in lifts and other public yet enclosed spaces. The gathering was about 95% black, 2% white, 2% coloured and 1% Indian.

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Sharks fans know how to party - and Kwa-Zulu Natal, the rugby team’s home base - is packed with people who love their home town, their ocean, their rugby team - and their parties! It’s good to see the Sharks getting behind an initiative that ensures fans get home safely after celebrating the team’s successes.

The Shark Tank is renowned for Sharkertainment of the highest order and the biggest after-match party in the world. This phenomenon has become known throughout the rugby playing fraternity, and thousands of fans visit the Absa Stadium Durban with the sole intention of being part of the celebrations.

Long may it last - but at the same time, long may it remain controlled and managed responsibly. Notwithstanding the lubricant properties of the party, the hosts of major sporting and entertainment events have a responsibility to highlight the associated pitfalls of drinking and driving. (more…)

By Briony French

Memory Slippers ad Last year, my sister wanted to get me something I really wanted for Christmas and I had told her that I wanted new slippers.  The ones I wanted was these really cool soft slippers I’d seen advertised on T.V. They are called Memory Slippers. And so off she went and did her shopping. On Christmas Day I got this gift from my sister and, yes, you guessed right,  it was the Memory Slippers I’d wanted! So, immediately I kicked off my old slippers and put on the new ones. And there is nothing like new slippers to wear in; these were so nice! The sponge inside was perfect and I did test them a little. I would take them off to see if the ‘memory’ of the sole of my foot would come back, and it did! But, sadly, this was short-lived. Now I have bought new slippers which were cheaper than the Memory Slippers and have lasted longer. They are warmer too. I bought myself bootie slippers.

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By Briony French

Last night myself seven friends and I went for dinner at a restaurant we know is pretty good. But on my arrival I discovered that they had changed the name of the restaurant from Casa Da Galinha to Cow Father. I swear it was like they changed the name from when I booked the table at 10am and 7pm when we arrived. I had also requested a smoking section as most of us are smokers and when we were seated I confirmed it was the smoking section. It was only on requesting an ash tray that I was told it wasn’t. So, not sure if we could smoke or not,  we scoped out the restaurant to see if anyone else was smoking and once we saw there was, we lit up. We had to use our drinks cans as ashtrays because the person I originally asked for an ash tray had failed to bring us one. Once all of us had arrived and had our first drink and ordering our second, we noticed we hadn’t been offered menus and had to request menus from the waiters.

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By John Carlin
Author: Playing the Enemy, the book on which the Clint Eastwood film, Invictus, is based. This article was first published by IOL.

It’s been a spectacular success. Everything according to plan, smooth as silk; South Africa successfully re-branded; no unpleasant surprises, and plenty of pleasant ones.

Not a cheep, for example, out of the ludicrous Julius Malema, who the ANC wisely locked up in the attic, as you do with the mad live-in relative when important guests come around.

No reports of any new Zuma off-spring, or even wife. As for the bigger and far more important picture, the games all started on time and were broadcast live around the world without a hitch (though I gather there were some power-cut problems in England “mercifully, perhaps” during one of their national team’s relentlessly hapless displays). No massacres of foreign visitors, either, as long advertised in the foreign press.

Crime generally seems to have sunk to Swiss levels of innocuousness during South Africa’s four-week World Cup honeymoon.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously declared on April 27, 1994, the day all South Africans went to vote for the first time: “It’s like falling in love!” Well, 16 years later, it was a renewal of the marriage vows; it was South Africa falling in love with itself all over again.

All those stories, promoted by Fifa, among others, about this being Invictus II, about 2010 being the 1995 rugby World Cup all over again, about healing racial wounds, uniting the fractured nation and so forth, were off the mark. It was much, much better than that.

What we saw was just how united and racially healed South Africa really is, how far we’ve advanced since the nervy Nineties 1990s. The word for what we have seen in these past few weeks is consolidation. Nothing new, these past years, to anyone who has walked about South Africa, done ordinary everyday things, in seeing black and white people getting along just fine.

All the racial tension stories that surfaced after the death of Eugene Terre’Blanche (”South Africa on the brink of racial war” etc), have been shown to be, as a British friend of mine who knows the country well, succinctly put it the other day, “just so much bollocks”.

I’ve been to watch loads of games at the stadiums, but by far the best memory I take away from the World Cup was the atmosphere at Melrose Arch, in Joburg, during the South Africa-France game. From what I saw there, and from reports of friends and fellow journalists who have taken part in identically joyous events of this kind up and down the country, I’d like to ask a question: “If South Africa is not a united country, then what country is?”

As I have written in these pages before, the thousands gathered before a big screen at Melrose to watch Bafana Bafana’s heroic exit from the competition knew in their hearts that it was a lost cause, that their team would not make it to the second round of the competition.

But the solidarity was absolute. People of all colours and religions, in what until not very long ago had been an exclusively white residential area, heaving and swaying and singing, celebrating their common South Africanness with proud, unforced energy: what a blow for the legion of dismal sceptics that flood the opinion pages of this country’s newspapers!

Never mind black and white, there were a number of Jewish people with yarmulkes on their heads at Melrose and a number of Muslim men with long beards and Muslim women wearing veils on their heads. Where else in the world would you see such people mingling without tension, their national identities trumping ancient religious divides? Not too many places, believe me.

And the great thing is that the world has got to see all this the rebranding really has kicked in.

Via 15 000 fellow journalists that have descended on this country (please, don’t anyone tell me ever again that the World Cup was a waste of money!), the entire planet has got to see South Africa’s best face - in my prejudiced view, the best face in the world.

I have spoken in the past four weeks to journalists from Mexico, El Salvador, the USA US, China, India, Britain, Germany, Spain - you name it. The first thing that has has surprised them has been the total absence of racial friction. Most of them being white, or white-ish, they concurred that the contacts they had had with black South Africans had been consistently civil, cordial, respectful, good-humoured, even fun.

As for the the panic in their hearts at the prospect of murderous hordes chasing them down dark alleys, the predominant sensation among those who acknowledged they had succumbed to these terrors was embarrassment.

I did a bit of work early on in the competition for a big US television channel, some on-air punditry about South African politics and society. The recording studio was at Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, just above the big statue of the great man. About 100m away was the television station’s tented base of operations.

I and an American producer walked from the studio to the base camp and back half a dozen times. Our trajectory was through a crowded mall. The only potential peril I was aware of was that we might trip on the mechanical escalators and bang our heads.

But you know what? The television station’s rules required that on each of these strolls we should be accompanied by a beefy security guard - a dark-suited Nigerian, in this case. The producer I was with honourably squirmed at the timorousness of his employers.

The Nigerian kept a poker-face, but inside he was laughing, all the way to the bank.

Worse was the case of the English journalists covering the England camp. The bus they travelled in always had one security escort in front and one behind; four Afrikaner former police officers or soldiers kept watch on them everywhere they went.

At first the journalists were not displeased to have them around. I heard that before the World Cup the bosses of one major British newspaper (won’t tell which, but it wrote about the looming racial bloodbath following Terre’Blanche’s death) had the brilliant idea, in these troubled economic times, of hiring a security consultant to address the South Africa-bound troops.

A man with a briefcase appeared (presumably working for the same outfit that would later provide the detachment in South Africa) and rattled off the figures for violent crime in the purportedly benighted country, for murder, for rape - not excluding male rape. He put the fear of God into the poor journalists. Four weeks later what they feel is deeply embarrassed.

Talking of journalists, on a less foolish note, the way Fifa and the Local Organising Committee set up the bureaucracy of accreditation and general facilities was a dream.

Cleverly aware of how critical we often unsavoury characters would prove in the marketing of South Africa, they set up a wonderfully smooth operation.

Getting your tickets for games was straightforward and the staff were as cheerful as they were efficient. At the stadium media centres and the press seats the internet connections (journalists’ lifeblood these days) were excellent, whether you were in Rustenburg, Bloemfontein or Joburg’s Soccer City.

I covered the World Cup in Japan in 2002: this was incomparably more hassle-free. I heard the same from journalists who covered the World Cup in Germany four years ago.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Fan Walk in Cape Town, a two and a half kilometre 2.5km vaudeville show from the centre of town to that beautifully elegant Coco Chanel hat of a stadium, along which the massed hordes, thousands of children included, were bursting with bonhomie - so much so that for the semi-final on Saturday the love in the air breathed unexpected life into the sails of old Holland.

The long-buried historical connection with the Dutch (Jan van Who?) suddenly surfaced in the Mother City in a riot of orange. I went up to one orangeman and woman after another, a number flying Dutch flags, and, to my astonishment, all the ones I spoke to turned out to be South Africans.

They were happy Holland won, not least because they avenged Uruguay’s unspeakably cruel victory over Ghana.

The big lesson I take away from all this is one that I already knew but had forgotten, amidst the distracting babble we read about in the press and , hear and see in the broadcast media from the political classes, chatterers and newspaper columnists.

South Africa is much better, brighter and bigger-hearted than you’d think from paying attention to all that lot. The society is great, and it is the reason why (never mind the safari parks and the fairest Cape) so many of us foreigners who’ve spent time here find this country more beguiling than any other on Earth. Ordinary people have so much more wisdom, grit, resilience, invention, courage and generosity than you find in most countries.

And some of these ordinary people are to be found, for sure, in the ANC. Even in the upper reaches of the government, if you look hard enough. There are the looters, the hypocrites and the frauds, too, as we all know. We can just hope that the experience of the World Cup might have awoken their better angels, brought out the good that lurks in many of them, that sparked their commitment to politics in the first place.

Failing that, as a friend here says, let’s pray that they remain content with taking just five or 10 percent of the national cake, instead of 30 percent or the full damn monty.

Your Julius Malemas - and I use him as a generic term for all that’s rotten and silly about the South African political scene - are best ignored. Or rather, friends in the media, try, if you can resist the temptation, not to publish and broadcast what he says. Delve deep, rather, into what he and his like do.

As for Zuma, he is a nice guy and has many of the best instincts of the best South Africa. The problem is that he lacks gumption and sexual maturity. Not much we can do about the latter, but maybe we can prod him to show a bit of principle and character and lead the ANC back to what it once was, abandoning its lootocratic ways. A leader must not be a jellyfish, said PW Botha. Heed those words, Mr President.

Though, perhaps, he won’t. In which case, let’s take comfort in the knowledge that the country is, I repeat, bigger and better than the state.

If the state does not get in the way, if it actually helps, as it has done with this World Cup (notably the policing, but also the building of infrastructure) then great.

If not, well, South Africans have it in them to make a plan. The big message from this spectacularly successful staging of the greatest show on Earth is that, yes, South Africa can.

Now, with more confidence and pride and calm than ever before, get on and do it.

John Carlin was the correspondent for the London Independent in South Africa between 1989 and 1995. He has returned to South Africa frequently since then, including nine times in the past 18 months, chiefly to work on television documentaries. He wrote Playing the Enemy, the book on which the Clint Eastwood film, Invictus, is based. The book has been translated into 16 languages, including Spanish and Dutch.

To see the original article, please click here

By Boris Johnson, Mayor of London,  20 Jun 2010

I wish you could have come with me yesterday as I ran through the delightful district of Westcliff, one of the richest square miles in Africa. The sun was taking the chill off the winter morning. The sky was blue. The urban forest of Johannesburg was a winter symphony of brown and green and gold.

Among the trees, on either side of the well-kept street, I passed the kinds of homes you normally associate with Beverly Hills. Here was the honey-stoned palazzo of a diamond executive. There was the schloss of the most successful boob-job exponent in the neighbourhood.

Each villa was the size of a country club, and through every set of gates you could see the carob-shaded tennis court or the ultramarine ping of the sunlight on the pool. Every property overtly proclaimed the determination of the haves to resist the depredations of the have-nots. Great brown Rhodesian ridgebacks snuffled behind the electric fences. Chubb security vans cruised quietly up and down. Fixed to the wall beside virtually every nine-foot impregnable gate was a sign announcing that any intruder would be met with an “Armed Response”.

I wish you could have been there, to soak up the splendour of the lives of the affluent Johannesburg professionals. Then I wish you could have come with me to another neighbourhood, a township called Cape Flats, nor far from Cape Town. Then you would have understood the vast economic disparity of South Africa – the wealth gap that helps to prompt the security fences of Westcliff.

Here there was no tarmac on the streets. No one had cleared up the piles of rubbish. No one had painted the battered grey breeze blocks of the flats or mended the panes in the washing-hung windows. Of the hordes of unwashed kids who came out to compete for our presents – badges and trinkets – hardly any seemed fluent in English.

A nice one-eyed woman called Mary took us in to see her flat, and though she was immensely proud of her two chipped-eared china dogs, and though her lino floor shone with mopping, she had almost none of the amenities that are taken for granted by the poorest families in modern Britain.

She had no hot water. She had no cooker except for a couple of electric rings. She had no system of heating or air conditioning, and though Mary and her family were avidly following the World Cup, they were listening to the commentary on a crackling old radio. They had no television, and nor did any of the neighbours.

Above all, she had no job, and neither did her husband. It was years since he had last worked as an upholsterer for motor cars, and the same applied to all the hundreds of other men and women who swarmed out of their flats to welcome the delegation from London.

They had no job, and no hope of a job – and yet these people, Mary and her neighbours, were lucky by the standards of many in South Africa. Mary lives in breeze-block luxury compared with the inhabitants of the “informal settlements” – shantytowns to you and me – of which there are 230 in the vicinity of Cape Town alone, providing homes to about 500,000 people in a population of 3.5 million.

It is when you have such inequality, and such grinding poverty, you cannot be surprised that some pessimists have asked whether it was sensible for South Africa to take on the difficulty and expense of hosting the World Cup. That is why I have spent the past few days posing the legacy question to just about everyone I have met.

What happens on July 12, after the captain of the winning team has waved the Jules Rimet trophy in his sweaty palm? What will people say when the last fan has traipsed home and the last journalist has composed his last philippic against his defeated national team and when the last vuvuzela has parped its last melancholy parp? What will this World Cup leave for South Africa?

I have asked barmen and journalists and politicians such as the remarkable Helen Zille, premier of the Western Cape province. I have ended up feeling like those Monty Python characters who were so foolish as to question the benefits of the Roman Empire. The World Cup not only gave jobs and skills and hope to thousands of local people.

The tournament gave an absolute deadline to South Africa for the introduction and improvement of all kinds of infrastructure – not just sports grounds, but roads and bridges and airports and bus lanes that would otherwise not have been built and which will benefit the country for decades to come. Above all, the World Cup has given this country something intangible but priceless: a deep sense of pride that it has taken on something difficult and done it well.

When they look at themselves in the approving mirror of world opinion, South Africans of every race agree that the first African World Cup is a joyous success, and that success breeds confidence. The rand is rising. South Africans who left for Australia or Canada are starting to return to a country whose banking system largely escaped the recent crisis.

The sheer number of visitors – about half a million – will help to open the eyes of the world to South Africa and its potential for trade and investment; and get this – crime, the crime that has been supposed to be one of the drawbacks of living here, is down 90 per cent in central Cape Town, and there has not been a single serious incident of crime or violence in any of the fan parks.

Of course there will be disappointments, and no one could pretend that the World Cup will solve the economic or political problems of the country. But it offers a sense of unity and confidence to a place with a tragic past. It should help to build the taxpayer base that is so essential to narrowing the wealth gap.

It gives potential wealth creators at least some of the infrastructure they need. Fifa took an inspired decision to give the World Cup to South Africa, and South Africa has responded brilliantly.